Sports and Menstrual Data for the Health and Performance of Rowers

Abstract

Over the past few decades, there has been a significant increase in the number of professional female athletes. One thing that both professional and amateur athletes can experience is the effects of their hormonal cycles. These hormonal cycles can affect their performance, and in return, their performance can affect their hormonal cycle. However, the underrepresentation of female athletes in sports research has resulted in most sports guidelines not reflecting this possible connection between the menstrual cycle and performance, causing female athletes to be unaware of it.

Athletes should be aware of the connection between their menstrual cycle and performance. Female rowers, in particular, experience a rapid increase in training load and they may be hesitant to discuss menstrual problems with their coach due to their relative newness to the sport, which could cause them to perform less optimally or even unhealthily. This project aims to find an alternative approach to support female rowers to build their knowledge using their sports and menstrual data so that they can perform optimally and healthily.

This project followed a research-through-design approach. This meant that knowledge was generated through design activities (Stappers & Giaccardi, 2014). The design activities were performed in three cycles to iteratively increase knowledge and improve a design that supported rowers in understanding the connection between their performance and the menstrual cycle. Each cycle began with a theoretical investigation of current design practices. These practices were then applied during a practical phase. The primary objective of each practical phase was to deploy and evaluate a design prototype with rowers.
The first cycle of research investigated how sports and menstrual data could be implemented in designs for female rowers. During the practical phase, a digital prototype was used with rowers and the evaluations indicated that the design should be simplified and place more emphasis on visualization. After the evaluation, a co-creation session was held which suggested that the design should explore the value of sharing the data.

The second cycle of research explored how tracking could be a valuable experience for rowers. The findings from the first cycle led to a physical design prototype that was again used and evaluated by rowers. The evaluations of the second phase suggested that the design should take a broader view of performance, and the co-creation of the second phase placed more emphasis on having different levels of activities by the rowers to understand the data. The knowledge generated throughout the project was synthesized into a final design.

The final design was a mobile application that would support rowers in exploring the relationship between their performance and their menstrual cycle. By tracking their mental, physical, menstrual, and contextual data on a daily basis, rowers could reflect on their beliefs about this relationship. In conclusion, the continuous implementation of insights constructed with stakeholders led to a design that could support rowers in understanding their experiences with performance and the menstrual cycle.